"Seeds Of Faith"

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego are three young men who stand out as heroes of faith.  Look at the stand they took! "We won't bow to your idols!" They made a choice to serve God no matter the persecution or the cost. They made a commitment to God that they lived with their lives. So, where does that kind of commitment come from?  It begins when someone shares the Word of God and plants seeds of faith.  The beginning of their faith, and the stand that they took started with the people in their lives who had the responsibility of "Training them up in the way they should go."(Proverbs 22:6). It's possible that it began the first time they heard of the goodness of their God and His faithfulness to those who had come before them. Maybe faith began when they were "church kids" listening to the stories of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It could have been when they learned about Moses and the parting of the Red Sea, or of Joshua and The Lord of Hosts taking Jericho with a shout. The possibilities are endless. Noah, Gideon, Samson, Deborah, Joseph, Samuel. Maybe faith was stirred in their hearts when they heard of a shepherd boy taking on a giant to defend the name of the Lord. Commitment started for them in the same place as it does for every believer. "Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God" (Romans 10:17).

The kind of faith that stands before idols, when all others bow, doesn't begin when the music starts to play. Faith that takes on a fiery furnace doesn't begin with the strike of the match. Faith like that begins long before the test comes. It begins when someone shares the Word of God, a decision is made, and a willing heart receives. It is in that moment that the seed of faith begins to grow!

We don't know when these young men made their decision, but we do know that they made one. We know this because of what we read of them in Daniel chapter 1. In the very beginning of their captivity, the very first thing they did was show us that their commitment was to not leave God out of their circumstances. These four young men were not the only ones to be taken captive and brought back to Babylon, but we read in Daniel 1:19, "That among them all none was found like them." This declaration was made about them because of the commitment they made at the start of their testimony. It says in Daniel 1:8,9 that, "Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portions of the king's delicacies, nor with the wine which he drank; therefore he requested of the chief of the eunuchs that he might not defile himself. Now God had brought Daniel into the favor and good will of the chief of the eunuchs." According to the Strong's Concordance, the word "purposed" is the primitive root, siym(7760), which means "to put." This tells us that a determination to not be defiled was placed in the heart of these young men by an act of their will. They made a choice to walk according to the Ways of God. Ways that someone, earlier in their life, had taught them were the will of God. They put a choice not only in their heart but also in their actions.

These young men seemed to understand a truth that many believers today seem to forget. "God honors those who honor Him" ( 1 Samuel 2:30)! How did they know this? They had just been invaded, taken from their families, and brought as captives to another land. Their circumstances should have brought doubt and unbelief. They should have been feeling like God had abandoned them. Instead, they were "purposing," God first! How? How did they know to, "Walk by faith, and not by sight?" (2 Corinthians 5:7) How could these four young men, under these circumstances, have so much faith? Or rather, Who? Who had made this testimony possible? Someone had understood and obeyed Deuteronomy 6:4-7 "Hear,O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might. And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart; you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up." Someone had prepared them in their "beginning years" for what was to come. Someone had equipped them with a God who was REAL.

So, question for us today is this: Are we as His servants being faithful to plant seeds of faith that equip heroes to stand?